✤ The grave below the flowers ✤ (CRAIG OF THE CREEK)

Pill Purse

If you saw this before it was edited you fucking didn't.

The next day, Craig found his eyes getting heavy throughout the day. And no, he didn't sleep as much as he thought he would last night.

The only good thing about today was Ms.Muhberry letting her class pick from the prize chest they saw every once in a while. Using their ‘Good deed money’ to buy things from said chest.

At first when Craig went up there, he was overwhelmed by the options that seemed to never end. Until his eyes caught a fuschia coin purse. It was good for when he stole pills, he could hook it on anything like a keychain and bonus points, it was his favorite color.

It did the bare minimum of making his day not so bad, but the melatonin making him even more tired still kept his bitterness alive and well. Even with the coin purse hanging from his belt loop like a belt chain.

Maybe he should've taken two for extra results.

But now Craig was down to only three pills.

Maybe these pills were absolute junk, and he needed something stronger.

He couldn't check the medicine cabinet at home. His parents would definitely notice if anything was gone.

There had to be something Craig missed while looking through the medicine cabinet in Wildernessa's bathroom. Maybe he missed something while reading the labels. The second school was done for the day, it was back to Wildernessa's house.

Craig asked for a hangout back at Wildernessa's house after school that day. Craig watched the surprise cross her face. He knew she wasn't the most well liked person in school. But surely she's had people ask to hang out with her? She had to have other friends or at best family friends she only knew from her parents’ friends.

She talked about her day at school, how she got to feed the class pet, and was supposed to be taking it home in a few days. Craig listened to her vaunt about how much fun they'll have, how she'll care for it and prove to her classmates how caring for animals is actually done. Despite half of her class owning at least one pet.

At first, Craig showed slight interest in what was being said. But then he remembered what he really came for.

Craig excused himself to the bathroom, locked the door behind him, and opened the medicine cabinet.

He grabbed a pill bottle at random. When the purpose of the pill didn't meet his needs, he picked another.

Then another.

And another.

And another.

At this point, all of them seem to be for staying healthy, and all that crap adults have to worry about the second they're middle-aged.

After double checking all of them just to be sure, Craig accepted defeat and walked back downstairs to Wildernessa.

He'd probably come back another day if he needed more melatonin. That is if he still wants to take them.

But Wildernessa's house wasn't the only one with a medicine cabinet. The creek kids were free for investigation. He just needed to choose wisely and how he'd go about this.

That night when he left Wildernessa's house, he fished out the second melatonin pill he had hidden away in his new pill purse.

He really should've taken more from that pill bottle.

With a sigh, Craig took the pill and shut his eyes.

For the next two days, Craig approached a variety of creek kids for a hang out. It was the same, lock himself in their bathroom, investigate the medicine cabinet, steal anything that matches his needs and leave the bathroom as if nothing happened. For most kids he could only complete steps one and two before walking out the bathroom. And for the few kids he could do all the steps for, they all had sucky melatonin that wasn't even close to the kind at Wildernessa's.

Now Craig was back in Wildernessa's house, stealing yet another sum of melatonin pills, this time a fist full. He left only two so he wouldn't feel bad, it's fine, her parents could just buy more.

But something new sat in the pill purse. One seroquel tablet standing out amongst the other pills.

While stealing a round of melatonin, he saw a new pill bottle amongst the brightly colored ones that made Craig think he was in a candy store.

Curious, he read the labels and the pills' purpose.

Used for treating a thing called "psychosis."

Which, after a quick Google search, did include hallucinations.

Though unsure whether or not he actually had it, Craig took one pill just in case.

"Craig, Craig!"

"Huh?"

"You were zoning out again!"

"Sorry, Kelsey..."

"You're with me, Wildernessa."

"Sorry."

"Every time you ask to hang out at my place, you just go to another planet. It's like I'm hanging out with a corpse sometimes..."

"I'm no dead body, I'm fun. See, we're having fun right now."

"The only person having fun is you because you've been staring into space for so long, I bet twenty dollars you've discovered eight new planets the whole time I was talking. The Alliance of Science would just LOVE hearing you steal their jobs!"

"That's weird I always thought they'd discover more than that in the future…"

"This isn't about them, Craig! What is going on with you anyway? You've been more sleepy than usual, and you've gotten these weird headaches. Are you sick or something?"

"Of course not, I'm fine."

"If you say so...Anyway, my abuelita came over and got me a puzzle, wanna help me with it?"

"How many pieces is it?"

"I don't know, hundred?"

"Fine."

"Don't fall asleep on the puzzle, though."

"I won't."

He, in fact, fell asleep.

Thankfully, not on the puzzle, but Vanessa still gave him quite the scolding.

When Craig went home for the day, he slipped himself inside of his bedroom and took out his pill purse.

He took out a bottle of water and the seroquel tablet.

He placed it on his tongue and let the sip of water do the job of swallowing it.

He hated the feeling of the tablet going down, something about it felt foreign to him. Then, a sudden feeling of dread washed over him, like he had done something bad. Something he really wasn't supposed to be doing. It felt wrong to steal from Vanessa's parents, to befriend Vanessa solely for the melatonin, to keep taking it despite the dreams getting stranger, the hallucinations worsening in other forms and his head throbbing.

God, what would Jason think? He'd probably be repulsed by his mere existence, feeling nausea just remembering this guy kissed him-

Craig shook his head and aggressively shoved the pill purse on his bed. He didn't check how long the new tablet took to kick in, assuming it would be awhile, Craig got out his homework in hopes to make time go by faster.

But he couldn't even get past answering the first question without feeling sudden dizziness. His head spun as his vision swayed, Craig tried lightly rubbing his temples to get himself to focus, but nothing happened.

He really should've done his homework before taking the seroquel.

When Craig got up from his desk, he felt like he would fall off the crest of the earth until he was able to wobble back on his bed.

Maybe he had done something bad, something really bad. Craig let the dread set in as his head throbbed. He tried rolling over to retrieve his pill purse in order to go to sleep, but he found his eyes getting heavy and drifted off to sleep.